Category Archives: Walking Dead
ZOMBIE HISTORY – Zombie Scenes in the Bible
Zombies loom large in popular culture these days. Max Brooks’ “World War Z: An Oral 
History of the Zombie War” (2006), the Jane Austen, Seth Grahame-Smith mashup “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies” (2009), and Melissa Marr’s “Graveminder” (2011), to name but a few recent novels, enjoy a wide readership. There are also graphic novels, the AMC television show “The Walking Dead,” video games, and of course movies. Some of my recent favorites in the latter category include the Norwegian Nazis-as-zombies film “Dead Snow” (2009) with its delightful tagline “Ein! Zwei! Die!” and Drew Goddard and Joss Whedon’s “The Cabin in the Woods” (2012). With all of this going on, there is little surprise to come across the open-source, collaborative Stinque Zombie Bible. It was just a matter of time, I suppose, and the King James Bible will never be quite the same.
I am an unabashed zombie fan but also teach “classic” English literature and the New Testament so I can’t quite bring myself to desecrate the literary and religious masterpiece that is the Authorized (King James) Version by contributing to the Zombie Bible. Still, wanting to get into the spirit of things, I can’t resist noting a few biblical scenes and themes — a top 10 list — that come to mind each time I watch or read the latest version of the zombie apocalypse to come along. At least in some passages, a zombie-Bible mashup requires very little editorial interference.
1. The Gospel of Luke: “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen” (Luke 24:5). Such a suggestive phrase. Note also that the angels asking the question and those they address are standing inside a tomb at the time (Luke 24:2-4).
2. The Book of Revelation: “the sea gave up the dead that were in it” (Revelation 20:13). John the Seer’s creepy statement reminds me of a scene in George A. Romero’s “Land of the Dead” (2005) that features slow-moving corpses walking out of the surf, and Max Brooks’ “World War Z” with its account of the boy returning from a swim with a bite mark on his foot. He also describes the zombie hoards roaming the world’s oceans: “They say there are still somewhere between twenty and thirty million of them, still washing up on beaches, or getting snagged in fisherman’s nets.”
3. Deuteronomy: “Your corpses shall be food for every bird of the air and animal of the earth, and there shall be no one to frighten them away” (Deuteronomy 28:25-26; cf. 2 Samuel 21:10; Psalm 79:1-2; Isaiah 34:2-3; Jeremiah 7:33). The ancients worried about the exposure of their body after death. Improper care of one’s corpse was a terrifying prospect, so it is no wonder it features in prophetic warnings of divine wrath. Qoheleth insists that even though a man lives a long life and has many children, if he “has no burial … a stillborn child is better off than he” (Ecclesiastes 6:3). The indignity of non-burial presumably accounts for the honor bestowed on the poor man Lazarus in Jesus’ parable; the rich man receives proper burial but Lazarus “was carried away by the angels to be with Abraham” (Luke 16:22) because there was no one to care for his remains.
4. The Book of Job: “Why is light given to one in misery, and life to the bitter in soul, who long for death, but it does not come, and dig for it more than for hidden treasures…?” (Job 3:20-21). Job is angry he did not die at birth (3:11), adding that he loathes his life and does not want to live forever (7:16). Others prefer death to life out of principled anger against God, like the prophet Jonah (4:3; cf. 4:8). Physical death eludes a surprising number of people in the Christian Bible, and this is not always a welcome thing. The prophet John refers to some who “seek death but will not find it; they will long to die, but death will flee from them” (Revelation 9:6). The prospect of an elusive death, as every zombie fan knows, terrorizes the living. The “stricken” Charlotte Lucas in “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies” agrees to marry the tedious and obsequious minister Mr. Collins because she wants “a husband who will see to [her] proper Christian beheading and burial.” This is no small task for most survivors left with such a grim assignment, as Shaun well knows: “I don’t think I got it in me to shoot my flat mate, my mom, and my girlfriend all in the same evening” (“Shaun of the Dead,” 2004).
5. The Gospel of Matthew: “The tombs also were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised. After [Jesus’] resurrection they came out of the tombs and entered the holy city and appeared to many” (Matthew 27:52-53). Unwanted persistent life is a recurring image in biblical literature and so too is language referring to the impermanence of bodily death. The dead do not stay dead. The psalmist is confident he will not “see decay” (Psalm 16:10 New International Version; cf. Acts 2:27; 13:35). We read of the physical resurrections of specific individuals (e.g., 1 Kings 17:17-24; Luke 8:49-56; maybe Acts 20:7-12) and expected mass revivals (e.g., 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17). Some of these accounts of un-dying involve reference to un-burying. Mary and Martha’s brother Lazarus walks out of his tomb when “they took away the stone” (John 11:41). On Easter morning, mourners find “the stone, which was very large, had already been rolled back” (Mark 16:4). A second century writer describes further the events preceding Jesus’ emergence from the tomb: “That stone which had been laid against the entrance to the sepulchre started of itself to roll and gave way to the side, and the sepulchre was opened” (Gospel of Peter9.35).
6. Ezekiel: Ezekiel receives a vision promising the restoration of Israel (37:11). Seeing a valley full of bones, the Lord instructs him to speak to them, saying, “O dry bones … I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. I will lay sinews on you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live” (37:4-6). When Ezekiel does so, “there was a noise, a rattling” as bones come together and sinew and skin appears and the breath of life returns. The dry bones “lived, and stood on their feet, a vast multitude” (37:7-10).
7. Zechariah: “their flesh shall rot while they are still on their feet; their eyes shall rot in their sockets, and their tongues shall rot in their mouths” (Zechariah 14:12). They seem to resemble extras in a George A. Romero film.
8. The Gospel of Mark: “hell, where their worm never dies” (Mark 9:48; alluding here to Isaiah 66:24). Gehenna (here symbolically representing “hell,” and usually translated so, as in Mark 9:44, 45, 47) refers to the Valley of Hinnom located to the south and southwest of Jerusalem. Following the reign of Israel’s righteous King Josiah (see 2 Kings 23:10-14), it became Jerusalem’s garbage heap, a place with maggots and rotting corpses. Jesus refers to this burning garbage in Mark 9:48, a place where residents of the city would leave the rotting corpses of humans and animals to the worms that do not die, to maggots. The image suggests the corpses of the damned rot ingehenna/hell — maggot ridden — in perpetuity.
9. 2 Maccabees: “[Antiochus IV Epiphanes] was seized with a pain in his bowels, for which there was no relief, and with sharp internal tortures — and that very justly, for he had tortured the bowels of others with many and strange inflictions … he fell out of his chariot as it was rushing along, and the fall was so hard as to torture every limb of his body. … the ungodly man’s body swarmed with worms, and while he was still living in anguish and pain, his flesh rotted away, and because of the stench the whole army felt revulsion at his decay. Because of his intolerable stench no one was able to carry the man who a little while before had thought that he could touch the stars of heaven” (2 Maccabees 9:5-6, 7, 9-10). The Syrian ruler’s physical body rots away zombie-like while he still lives. The cause is divine, as the God of Israel strikes this enemy of the Jews with “an incurable and invisible blow” (2 Maccabees 9:5).
10. Genesis with the Book of Revelation: “the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep”; “the first heaven and the first earth has passed away, and the sea was no more” (Genesis 1:2; Revelation 21:1). With the disappearance of chaos, Eden returns: “On either side of the river is the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit” (Revelation 22:2; cf. Genesis 2:9). Horrors stories often wander back and forth between forms of paradise (ordered society) and chaos (some variant of an apocalyptic hellscape) thus recalling biblical stories with similar alternations. Zombie stories typically depict the disintegration of the modern world, and often hint at a return from the wilderness to the paradisiacal garden for survivors (cf. Genesis 3:23-24). Danny Boyle’s “28 Days Later” (2002), for one, ends with a developing romance between Jim and Salina, happy in the cultivated lands around a cottage that echoes Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. The sequel “28 Weeks Later” (2007), however, depicts a failed attempt to restore Eden. After the spread of the disastrous infection in the first film, the sequel documents efforts to repopulate the United Kingdom. Survivors return to their homeland, to what the director’s commentary refers to as “a new world” and a “Garden of Eden.” Naturally, mayhem ensues and the infection spreads as the movie unfolds. It wouldn’t be much of a horror movie otherwise.
GERM OUTBREAK AT CDC – Security lapses found at CDC bioterror lab in Atlanta
A federal bioterror laboratory already under investigation by Congress for safety issues
has had repeated incidents of security doors left unlocked to an area where experiments occur with dangerous germs, according to internal agency e-mails obtained by USA TODAY. In one incident, an unauthorized employee was discovered inside a restricted area.
A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention spokesman says the unsecured door incidents in 2010 and 2009 inside its Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratory in Atlanta were “not an acceptable practice of the agency.” At no time, though, were bioterror organisms such as anthrax at risk of falling into the wrong hands, he said.
“The doors in question here are but one layer of multiple layers of security when it comes to both the animals and the agents that are worked on,” CDC spokesman Tom Skinner said. “The security measures we have in place, without going into detail, make it close to impossible for anyone who doesn’t have approved access to the agents to get their hands on them.”
The e-mails document doors being left unlocked in the building’s high-containment lab block, which includes an animal-holding area and Biosafety Level 3 labs where experiments are done on microbes that can cause serious or potentially fatal diseases and can be spread through the air. Anthrax, monkeypox, dangerous strains of influenza and the SARS virus are examples.
One e-mail by a CDC safety manager describes an unauthorized man discovered in the animal-holding area and multiple doors that were unsecured at the time. Skinner says the man was a CDC scientist but was not immediately able to provide further details about why he was in the restricted area. Skinner said the man was in an outer corridor of the BSL-3 suite of labs.
For safety and security, access to BSL-3 labs is restricted and they are supposed to have special airflow systems designed to help keep organisms inside. Problems with the airflow systems revealed by USA TODAY, including a February incident where air briefly blew out of a lab into a “clean” hallway, prompted the House Energy and Commerce Committee this week to launch a bipartisan investigation into safety issues. The committee is examining whether CDC — which inspects its own labs along with others nationwide that handle bioterror agents — is complying with federal safety requirements at the lab building, also known as CDC Building 18.
E-mails written by CDC Safety and Occupational Health manager Patrick Stockton indicate the lab has had security lapses that Rutgers University biosafety expert Richard Ebright said may be a “major violation” of security standards for labs that work with potential bioterror agents.
In a November 2009 e-mail, Stockton wrote to several CDC officials involved with Building 18’s high-containment laboratory area: “We are continuing to have some difficulties with doors remaining unsecured in the (high-containment lab) area. … If we continue to have issues, we will need to begin looking at individual access rights for these doors.” The particular issue involved expansion sections of the doors, used to accommodate large pieces of equipment. The “through-bolts are not being re-engaged, and the doors are remaining unsecured,” Stockton wrote.
Five months later, the expansion doors continued to be left unlatched and unsecured. According to an April 29, 2010, e-mail to more than a dozen CDC officials involved with the lab building, Stockton wrote that earlier that day “an individual with no access and no escort” was found in the research animal-holding area of the high-containment lab area.
The e-mail continued: “He did not have access and at this point we are not sure how he got there.” Stockton wrote that he talked to program and animal staff and “no one from their programs let this person in.” CDC’s Office of Security and Emergency Preparedness, which is a liaison to the Department of Homeland Security, was investigating, the e-mail said. Homeland Security officials did not respond to questions about the CDC security incidents.
Stockton’s e-mail says that after the incident he and the building’s high-containment lab manager, Anthony Sanchez, walked the entire high-containment block and found two doors unsecured. “This can certainly happen by mistake on occasion but we have addressed this issue in the past and now it seems to be a common failure point. … It is imperative that all doors leading to high containment remain secured,” Stockton wrote.
Stockton and Sanchez didn’t grant interviews. CDC spokesman Skinner said: “Doors being left open by staff is not a standard practice. It’s unacceptable, and our safety office has sent out numerous reminders to staff of the importance of staff practicing good physical security.”
Skinner said he is unaware of any other door security incidents after the one in April 2010. He emphasized that multiple layers of security in the building would have prevented any unauthorized person from accessing germs that hold the potential to be used as bioterror weapons. “The bottom line is, worker safety and the public safety were never compromised,” he said.
Ebright, of Rutgers University, expressed concern about the repeated issues revealed in news reports about Building 18 since the $214 million building opened in 2005, including articles in 2007 about backup generators that failed to keep airflow systems working during a power outage, and in 2008 about a high-containment lab door that the CDC sealed with duct tape after an incident where an airflow system malfunctioned and sent potentially contaminated air into a “clean” corridor.
The “documents you have obtained over the past several years make it clear that there has been a pattern of corner-cutting and negligence at CDC biocontainment facilities —starting with the failure to include provisions for emergency backup power, and encompassing inadequate door seals, improper airflow, jury-rigged repairs, and unsecured access points,” Ebright said.
If the security issues described in Stockton’s 2010 e-mail continue and bioterror agents are being used in that area, Ebright said, “then heads should fall.”
The CDC currently is responsible for inspecting the safety and security of its labs that work with bioterror agents. Skinner said CDC has a 66-year record of operating its labs safely.
The CDC said this week, in the wake of USA TODAY’s reports, that it is considering having its labs’ safety reviewed by an outside agency, such as the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID).
Biosafety and biosecurity concerns have been the subject of previous congressional concerns. A 2009 report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, examined the potential risks posed by the growing number of high-containment labs doing research on potential bioterror agents. It found that while lab accidents are rare, they do occur, primarily because of human error and systems failures.
It also noted that insiders working in the labs can pose risks, pointing to the Federal Bureau of Investigation‘s allegation that Bruce Ivins, a scientist at USAMRIID in Fort Detrick, Md., was the “sole culprit” in the 2001 anthrax attacks. While he was under investigation in 2008, Ivins died of a drug overdose.
“There are arguably two aspects to insider risk: the motive of the insider and the ability to misuse material and laboratory facilities,” the GAO wrote in its report.
Zombie Restaurant Set To Open In Tokyo
Zombies aren’t known for enjoying sit-down meals; most prefer to eat on the run (or shamble).
However, Japanese zombies who want a taste of fine dining will soon get their chance in the form of a zombie-themed restaurant that is opening in Tokyo on July 13.
It’s called the Biohazard Cafe and Grill S.T.A.R.S restaurant, and is based on the Japanese version of “Resident Evil” videogames, known as “Biohazard,”according to ZoKnowsGaming.com.
TheVerge.com reports that Capcom, the company that makes the ‘Resident Evil’ games, plans to sell limited-edition items at the undead diner and entertain customers hungry for zombie-themed entertainment with dance performances by game characters.
Unlike actual zombies, which never really die, the zombie restaurant is scheduled to only last a year, according to Kotaku.com.
The menu hasn’t been released — or exhumed — but a similarly-themed restaurant that opened in January featured a cake made to look like brains, according to the gaming website CrunchyRoll.com.
If the restaurant chef decides to put actual brains on the menu, Damien Casten — who runs Candid Wines, a distributor of small production wines in Chicago — recommends making sure the wine list includes a chenin blanc from Saumur or a chardonnay from the Maconais in Burgundy.
“Of course, this assumes that you are simmering the brain in a cream sauce,” he recently told The Huffington Post. “This also assumes that you have time to treat the brains gently, and that will often mean soaking them in milk for a few hours.”
EUROPE TRYING TO TURN AMERICA INTO A ZOMBIE WASTELAND
A WAVE of gruesome cannibal attacks that have left Americans fearing a “zombie apocalypse” is being fuelled by a drug imported from the UK, The Sun can reveal.
The mind-bending narcotics that make users eat living human flesh are bought off the internet — labelled as BATH SALTS.
Cops have been shocked by a surge in frenzied attacks by people, which includes:
HOMELESS Ronald Poppo, 65, had three-quarters of his FACE chewed off by Rudy Eugene, 31, who was high on the drug when cops shot him dead last month in Miami. The officers had repeatedly ordered him to stop but he just growled at them like a wild animal. Poppo is now partially blind.
MUM Pamela McCarthy, 35, who was tasered by cops as she attacked her three-year-old son this month. She had a cardiac arrest and died in hospital in New York.
CRAZED Carl Jacquneaux, 43, bit a chunk out of the face of his ex-wife’s new lover Todd Credeur, 48, when he turned up at her home in Lafayette, Louisiana, this month.
ON the same day, Brandon de Leon, 21, was restrained in a Hannibal Lecter-style face mask when he tried to bite off the hands of cops who arrested him in Miami. He screamed at them: “I’m going to eat you.”
Another user said the “bath salts” made him feel “evil” — and convinced him he was possessed by Jason Voorhees, the psycho in the Friday the 13th movies.
Freddy Sharp, 27, from Tennessee, said: “It felt like the darkest, evilest thing imaginable. I was hallucinating about being in an insane asylum and being possessed by Jason Voorhees. I couldn’t stop whatever was in me.”
TV reporter Cenk Uygur watched footage of Freddy being restrained by medics and said: “He looks like a zombie. People are talking about a zombie apocalypse and all these people eating each other. I cannot fathom why you would do bath salts that make you want to eat someone’s face off.”
US authorities fear the cannibalistic attacks could become a pandemic. They have discovered that many shipments are coming from the UK.
In an investigation by network NBC, a girl of 16 ordered a batch from a firm which, despite saying it did not sell to under-18s, soon delivered. A reporter said: “Just days later, the drugs arrived from England to the NBC studios. Even more alarming is cops that say they cannot stop the sale of the drugs as they are not illegal.”
The Sun knows of several British “bath salts” sites which boast delivery to the US in five-to-eight working days — but we will not print the addresses.
One mockingly suggests users put them in their bathtub to help “erase fatigue and invigorate the body”. It says the products are offered “for scientific research purposes only” and are “not designed for human consumption”.
But it also advises buyers to use the drug “sparingly” and predicts the effects will last for several hours. No mention is made, however, of the risk that users will turn into the crazed, flesh-eating monsters horrifying America.
Earlier this month, a naked man was arrested ranting and screaming outside the Los Angeles home of British actor Orlando Bloom, 35. He was said to be manic and sweaty as he prowled the estate.
Users of the drug have reported feeling incredibly hot, which is why many strip off. They can also develop superhuman strength — meaning it can take five or six men to restrain them.
They become so manic and delusional that the term “excited delirium” is being used to describe their mental state. The shocking wave of attacks has sparked fears of a real-life zombie outbreak as seen in movies such as Dawn Of The Dead.
The dangers of so-called legal highs has hit the headlines in the UK in recent weeks with two incidents linked to a new “bath salts” drug called Benzo Fury.
Alex Herriet, 19, died after taking the £10 high at the Rockness festival in Scotland.
And Katie Wilson, 19, paraded naked in a Tesco in Bourne, Lincs, after taking the drug.
The “bath salts” are actually a cocktail of amphetamine-like chemicals, mainly mephedrone, MDPV and methylone. Authorities in the US and UK have tried to close loopholes allowing the drugs to be sold.
Last year America’s Drug Enforcement Administration imposed a 12- month emergency ban on the three chemicals. MDPV is illegal in the UK.
But experts have warned the current rules are ineffective.
David Shurtleff, of the National Institute on Drug Abuse in the States, explained drug makers are constantly “tweaking” the molecular structure of the substance to get round regulations while maintaining the effects.
Dr Shurtleff said: “The problem is that chemists are very clever.”
The number of calls America’s Poison Control Centers receive about the drug rose from 304 in 2010 to 6,138 in 2011. Addiction expert Dr Deborah Mash of University of Miami says the problem should chill people to the bone. She said: “This is almost like a science fiction episode where someone creates a dangerous molecule and it is released into the public. The results are terrifying in the extreme.”
Things have got so out of hand in America that many people feared a mutant virus was to blame.
The Centre for Disease Control and Prevention had to release a statement saying it is not aware of any virus that can cause zombie-like behaviour.
Addiction expert Dr Karen Hylen believes the cannibals were already disturbed — and that eating human flesh can become addictive. Dr Hylen said: “It takes a very disordered psyche to become interested in cannibalism. But once a person entertains such fantasies and acts on them, eating flesh will release brain chemicals that can make the process addictive.”
Luka Magnotta, 29, is the most infamous recent “flesh eater” after he was held on suspicion of killing and eating a lover.
But the Canadian oddball, who lived in London for a while, is not known to have used “bath salts”.
The Home Office said it is trying to root out the “bath salts” menace. A spokesman said: “MDPV is an illegal and harmful drug and stiff penalties are in place for people who possess or supply it. Drugs ruin lives which is why we are taking tough action against dealers and criminal gangs and helping people to free themselves from the cycle of dependency.”
Run Dext Run! – Diary of a Runner
Diary of a Runner is not about a hero. It is not a romance story where everyone lives happily ever after. It is an ongoing tale of survival horror. It is more than just blood and guts and zombies. It seeks to challenge your own moral compass and ask difficult questions while using the apocalyptic scenario as a backdrop. The material and language are often raw and graphic. Be advised.
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